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'Absolute lies': Patrick Brown disputes sex misconduct allegations

Antonella Artuso and Jamie Wallace, Postmedia Network

Saturday, February 10, 2018
4:20:04 EST PM

Patrick Brown tells his side of the story to Postmedia Network in an exclusive interview. Brown answers the tough questions about the sexual misconduct allegations he's facing in Toronto, Ont. on Friday Feb. 9, 2018. (Craig Robertson/Postmedia Network)

In his first interview since resigning as Ontario’s PC Party leader, Patrick Brown insists sexual misconduct accusations against him are "absolute lies" and that he is contemplating legal action to defend his shattered reputation.

“It was like getting hit by a truck and you're in a state of shock,” Brown said in an exclusive and emotional interview with Postmedia Friday about allegations that derailed his race for the Premier's office.

“It wasn't until last week that I got a bit of my strength back and wanted to investigate these allegations,” he said.

“When we looked at the allegations in detail, we were able to show that they're absolute lies and we can prove it.”

Brown said allegations made in a CTV News story, that he plied a high school student with drink and asked her to perform oral sex on him “didn’t happen.”

And he vehemently denied claims by a second accuser, a former constituency staff worker, that he fed her drinks during a Barrie hospital fundraiser, kissed her and tried to have sex with her without her consent.

The CTV story contained damning allegations from both women against Brown and amounted to political nitro glycerin that vapourized his leadership, career and reputation.

Within hours of the CTV story being aired, Brown had resigned and was being vilified by Ontario's Premier, NDP leader and his own caucus and party members.

“I went back to Barrie. I didn't want to see anyone. My family and friends were all in tears. I could barely speak,” Brown said. “Why would anyone do this to me? And I literally didn't have the strength to fight.”

He had been scheduled to have a cyst removed from his back, and wore a hat and glasses into the Barrie hospital to hide his identity.

The obviously emotional Brown said he was moved when a man came up, patted him on the back and said he believed him.

“And I got back into the car after the surgery and I started crying and I said, you know everyone here in Barrie believes in you, I've got to push back.”

Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown speaks to party members at their policy conference at the Toronto Congress Centre on Saturday Nov. 25, 2017. (Michael Peake/Postmedia Network)

THE FIRST ALLEGATION

The first anonymous complainant told CTV she and a friend met Brown at a bar while she was a student at a Barrie high school. She alleged Brown invited them back to his home where he gave her alcohol.

Once there, Brown allegedly took the high school student on a tour of that ended up with the teen in his second floor, upstairs bedroom.

Brown closed the door, she said, exposed his penis and asked her to perform oral sex on him.

"He pulled down his pants said, and I don’t know if he said 'suck my dick' or 'put this in your mouth,' but something along those lines,” the woman, now 29, told CTV.

Brown insists the incident she described never happened.

“I remember her being a girl in Barrie,” Brown said but otherwise doesn’t know her or recall meeting her.

Nor could the incident have happened as described, he said, because he lived in a ground-floor apartment when the teen was in high school.

“I did the math – in 2007, I didn’t live in the home where I had a second floor bedroom,” he said “It’s just factually impossible for that to have happened.”

Brown in fact lived in a duplex at 138 Collier St. in Barrie, a tiny one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment in a two-story house with a bedroom that didn’t have a door.

The other side of the duplex was his legal office and a separate apartment upstairs was rented out to someone else.

Brown presented Postmedia with affidavits from former staff attesting to the configuration of the building and a Barrie real estate professional involved with the property at that time, confirmed Brown lived in the downstairs apartment

“It was really small,” he told Postmedia, but asked that his name not be used. “It was on one floor.” The upstairs was “rented out to somebody else. It wasn’t his unit.”

The complainant, now 29, in early 2007 would have graduated from high school, and did according to year book records.

By that summer, in July, Brown did purchase and move into a nearby house with a bedroom on the second floor. He would have been 28 or 29 at the time, though the CTV story only says the incident happened “more than 10 years ago.”

“It’s an absolute lie,” Brown said.

SECOND ALLEGATION

The second allegation came from a former employee who claimed Brown lured her into his bedroom during a party and tried to force her to have sex with him.

Brown also forcefully denied those allegations.

“The reality is she kissed me,” Brown said. “I had gone up to my bedroom. I wanted to look at the social media coverage from the night... and she followed me upstairs.”

Brown first met the woman in the Ottawa airport prior to a flight to Toronto on Nov. 2, 2012, when she was 18. He was 34 and an MP. He contacted her later that night through Facebook, she replied, then in March 2013, she contacted Brown looking for work and he hired her for his Barrie constituency office.

In August of that year, she helped organize Brown’s August 15 Hockey Night in Barrie, a charity event to raise money for the local hospital’s cancer centre. Following the event, his staff, some NHL players and event organizers went to an after-party at a nearby nightclub called the Bank night club where she alleges Brown provided her with free drinks, and from there to Brown’s home where she says she continued to drink.

She alleged Brown, who does not drink, invited her and Brown’s friend upstairs to his bedroom to look at photographs on his iPad and the friend left, leaving her and Brown alone.

"The next thing I know he's kissing me,” the she told CTV. “Sitting beside me, kissing me and then I was, I kind of just froze up. He continued to kiss me and he laid me down on the bed and got on top of me. I remember consciously trying not to move my mouth and I was just not moving, so I was laying there immobile and he kept kissing me," she said.

"I felt it was sexual. I could feel his erection on my legs when he was on top of me so I felt that it would have gone to sexual intercourse if I had not done anything," she said. "I would characterize that as a sexual assault."

That “friend,” when contacted by Postmedia, called her version of events, that she, he and Patrick went up to the room together “false allegations.” He did go into the bedroom to charge his phone, the friend, who asked not to be identified, said, but never saw her and Patrick alone.

The friend said he told CTV the allegations were false, but that was not reported in the story.

After the encounter, the woman told CTV she asked Brown to drive her home, which he did. She also told CTV Brown gave her a raise and asked him to accompany her on a paid trip to India. CTV reported she spoke with her father “about the incident” and confirmed she also spoke with “three other people close to her.”

Mikaela Patterson, who has known Brown for 10 years, was also dating him at that time and was at the house party where the complainant said the assault took place, in the next room in fact.

[pn-pullquote text="He's not that kind of a guy" source="Mikaela Patterson, longtime friend" /]

Patterson said she and a girlfriend noticed the young woman following Brown around at the party.

“We went back to his house and the girl was kind of following him around which annoyed me,” she said. “And then Patrick ended up driving her home... and he spent the rest of the evening with me and Katie, my girlfriend.

"There was no sign of anyone distressed, like she didn't seem distressed or anything like that," she said.

Brown didn’t mention the kiss, but she doesn’t believe the assault described in the CTV story took place.

“He’s not that kind of a guy,” she said.

Following the alleged attack, the young woman continued to work for Brown, including the following summer of 2014.

Brown said any raise she received would have been given by her manager and any of his staff could have been invited, but not necessarily by him, to go to India on his many trips there as chairman of the Canada-India Parliamentary Association.

The staffer who leveled the allegations continued work on his leadership campaign after the incident, never indicated any discomfort or concern, and until very recently, "liked" a number of photos of him on Facebook site, he said.

Postmedia contacted both complainants. One is in Indonesia for a month and on Friday removed all content from her Facebook page but did not respond.

The second complainant when contacted said “I’ve already given my account of the events that took place that evening, and I stand by it.”

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When asked if he intends to continue on as a PC candidate, despite Leader Vic Fedeli's request that he leave the caucus, Brown said he's just focused on clearing his name.

"I'm not going to speculate on people's reasons for piling on, but I do hope the truth comes out," he said.

When asked whether other accusations might surface, Brown said "certainly not ones that have validity. But when you see two stories manufactured about yourself, of course you feel run over by a truck.”

“You can be run over again,” he said. “But these stories are absolute lies.”